Working for $2.46 /hr

My Girl has a mission this year and she feels strongly about it. She REALLY wants to accomplish it and she’s been working for over a month in order to get ready for it. While every second of her day hasn’t been devoted to it, a significant amount of her time has been dedicated to this endeavor. My Girl wants to participate in the Neighborhood Garage Sale.

Now me, I don’t really care for garage sales. It always seems like the Return On Investment is a little shy of the effort. I got this feeling because we had several of them when I was growing up. Mom would want to sell some stuff because we were moving someplace else and why would you want to waste the effort of packing and lifting something that you could didn’t need, didn’t use and could still sell to someone else? I would gather up my stuff that I didn’t want and at the end of it, I’d wind up with $3 or $4. Big Money, baby! This was great when I was 6 and dealing with a 25¢ allowance. Now that I’m (just a bit, ahem) older, I’m no longer so enthralled.

When I did my very own garage sale, with my very own stuff, I was definitely not as thrilled. After 80 hours of preparation and two days of selling, I had netted a grand total of $237 after I paid for the rented tables ($15.00). I’d just put in over two week’s worth of work for $2.46/hr. Less than half what I’d earned when I was twelve and had a paper route.

The day had started off great, I had a crowd of early birds waiting and they swooped in at it was ON. I couldn’t have had more people in my garage if I had shouted “Free GOLD!!” at the top of my lungs. That lasted for about three hours. After that I mostly got browsers. They’d come in and walk around, wouldn’t say anything and walk out. If I were really lucky, they’d make small talk.

I decided to donate the rest of the stuff and got more than $2,500 to write off for my taxes that year under Charitable Donations (make sure you get a detailed receipt). Donating everything took about four hours including drive time, which settles out to $625/hr. Hmm.To be fair, I should add in the 80 hours of prep time, plus four hours for “donation” time…$29.76/hr. HMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmm...

But far be it from me to point this out to My Girl who is REALLY going at it. Well, maybe I did mention a little something now and then…at least, I didn’t point it out that often. You should know that I NEVER mentioned it while grudgingly going through my stuff looking at what I thought would sell. I can also assure you that I would absolutely have NOT mentioned anything on this subject frequently, just as a matter of discussion you understand, the benefits of a tax write off and how a little money today isn’t as good as a lot more money tomorrow. No sirree bob, not me. Wouldn’t of done it. Besides, it wasn’t working anyway.

The days of the garage sale were cold (50+°) and rainy. We netted about $200.

Hmmm.